As an indie author, you probably want to focus on writing and promoting your books. If you are not working with professional book writing services, you need to cater for everything on your own end. So, did you know that a strong SEO strategy can improve your book’s visibility? And it doesn’t have to be hard. In this guide, we’ll provide some key tips for making your book discoverable through search engines.
The first thing we’ll look at is how to choose the right title and URL. Next, we’ll show you how to find relevant keywords and write an appropriate description of your book. So let’s get started!
Focus On the Title of Your Book
To make your book more discoverable, you want to focus on the title of your book. The title is what will appear in search results and there are two ways to use keywords here. You can either use exact match keywords or related terms.
- Exact match: This means that what you put into the title should exactly match what people type when they’re looking for something similar on Amazon (for example, if someone types “how to write a novel” into their browser’s address bar, an exact-match keyword would be “How To Write A Novel”).
- Related terms: These are words that are related but not quite as specific as an exact match term (for example, if someone types “how to write” into their browser’s address bar then related terms might include the writing process).
Select a Relevant URL
When it comes to URLs, consider your book title as the first option. If you have a long or complicated title that doesn’t fit into one line, use hyphens to separate words. Use numbers for multi-word phrases and your name for any instances where the word “book” might be used in place of numbers or hyphens (e.g., author name Rachael Smith).
Choose Relevant Keywords
Use keywords that are relevant to your book. You want readers to find your book on Amazon, so it makes sense that the keywords you choose should also be related to what’s in your book. The best way to find out what people will be searching for is by looking at the search terms that other books in your genre have used successfully and identifying which ones are most popular.
Choose keywords that aren’t too competitive. It’s important not to set yourself up for failure by choosing a keyword so competitive that it’ll be harder than necessary for you to rank well on Amazon’s search results pages (SERPs). If it looks like there are hundreds of books already ranking on page one, consider choosing something else instead!
Write Appropriate Descriptions
- Write appropriate descriptions. The description is the most important part of your book page on Amazon. It’s what people read first to decide if they want to buy your book, so make it count! You have four lines of text dedicated to describing your book and you need to get all that information in there.
- Include keywords relevant to your topic in the first line of each paragraph as well as at least once per paragraph or chapter heading. This helps readers find your work when they search for terms related to it using Amazon’s search feature (or other online sites).
- Use a call-to-action in each paragraph—something like “Buy now” or “Add To Cart”—to motivate potential buyers into making an immediate purchase decision.* Don’t use too many characters (no more than 120), otherwise no one will see them!
Use the Right SEO Strategy to Make Your Book More Visible to People
Now that you know the basics of SEO, it’s time to learn how to apply it to your book. Luckily, our team has plenty of experience helping authors with everything from keyword research and URL naming conventions to title and description tags on Amazon. Here are some quick tips:
Use Keywords Correctly
Make sure you’re using relevant keywords in your title, subtitle, description, category selection and all throughout the book itself. This is especially important if your book is part of a series or set—you should add them into all names for consistency’s sake so readers can find it easily when searching for other books like yours on Amazon or other platforms.
Here’s how you can come up with relevant keywords:
- Searching for keywords is not that hard of a job. In fact, you can get it done within a few clicks. First, open an incognito tab from the chrome browser. Doing this will prevent your browser to follow prior browsing practices, stopping them from influencing the upcoming search results.
- Place the seed keyword in the search console. This will make a whole list of keywords and phrases appear as a drop-down. They are the ones suggested by Google itself.
- Also, you can search for the seed keyword until the relevant book results show up like yours.
- Select the phrases or keywords that direct you to similar books.
Choose A Descriptive URL (Domain Name) For Your Book
Every author should have their own domain name that matches their pen name/brand identity online—and this goes double if you’re planning on building an email list or trying any kind of direct marketing campaign with your audience! Someone who searches for “the authority book” would be much more likely than someone looking for just “authority”.
Conclusion:
Are you done writing a book? Well, congratulations but wait. You are done with only half of the job. When the journey of writing reaches an end, the struggle of making the write-up reach the right audience starts.
You can make your book visible to more people by using the right SEO strategy. The trick is to focus on keywords, choose the right title, create a URL that’s relevant, and write descriptions that are appropriate.
This can be daunting at first but don’t fret. Once you get the hang of it, then you’ll see how beneficial it really is and how much it can help you in making more sales over time.
We hope our article covers everything you are looking for.
